1. What is being protected, and what is moving between sites?
Start with the animal unit, not the building. Ask the provider whether the site holds pigs, poultry, cattle, sheep or a mixed species operation; whether animals are present during cleaning; and whether the same crew, the same vehicle and the same equipment move between barns, farms or a slaughterhouse on the same day. Animal movement vehicles are the highest-risk item on most sites, because the mud and organic load on a wheel, a chassis rail or a tank interior is exactly the material that carries pathogens from one premises to the next.
If your operation includes feed trucks or animal transport as well as housing, say so at this stage. livestock facility steam cleaning and vehicle wash-down are usually planned together for a reason: a clean barn loses its value if the truck that pulls in behind it has not been treated to the same standard.
2. What does the surface actually look like before cleaning?
A serious provider asks for a walk-through, or at minimum photographs of the dirtiest surfaces, before quoting. Two sites with identical drawings can need completely different treatment. Slatted floors, wire mesh, drip lines under a ventilation fan, the seam where a panel meets a concrete floor, and the underside of a feed trough all hold dried manure, fat, milk scale or bedding fines in ways a smooth wall never will.
Age and material of the building matter just as much. Old timber, porous concrete and corroded steel cannot take the same treatment as sealed panels and stainless fittings. A provider who quotes without looking at the surfaces is guessing, and the guess is usually a pressure setting that is too high for what you have.
3. How will dry soil be handled before any water is applied?
Ask what happens to manure, bedding, spilled feed and loose dirt first. Water sprayed onto dry organic matter creates a slurry that spreads further than the soil it was meant to remove and turns a manageable job into a drainage problem. The order of work — scrape and dry-remove, then pre-rinse, then the main wash, then rinse, then dry — is a real cost driver, and a provider who does not describe their sequence is planning to skip a step when the clock runs short.
4. What is the water budget on site, and where does the run-off go?
Ask the provider how many litres their method will consume and what your own supply can deliver at the same time. A yard with a bore, a slurry tank and a foul drain has very different limits from one connected to mains water and an interceptor. On many farms the constraint is not the machine; it is the tank, the drain or the distance from the water point to the far end of the building.
Low-volume steam and hot-water equipment exists precisely for sites where water is scarce or run-off has to be controlled. A hot water and steam cleaning machine such as our battery-powered driving-style PWD02 carries its own water tank and works in dry steam, wet steam and hot-water modes, so a crew can treat a yard, a parking apron or a vehicle without laying hose across the whole site. Ask which mode the provider intends to use, and why.
5. What temperature and pressure, and on which surfaces?
Pressure removes soil; heat works on fat and on the residues that a cold jet leaves behind. Ask for both figures, and ask how they are measured — at the boiler or at the nozzle, since the number at the nozzle is the one your surface sees. Then ask how the provider protects sensitive items: electrical enclosures, bearing housings, insulation, silicone seals, fans and control cabinets. High-pressure water driven into a bearing or a junction box creates a failure that shows up weeks after the cleaning.
For comparison, our fixed HW02 steam cleaning machine is specified at 160 °C steam temperature, 0.8 MPa vapour pressure and 6 kW heating power on a 220 V supply, with an 80 litre stainless tank. Publish the specification you intend to work to, and check that the provider's machine is rated above what your dirtiest surface needs.
6. Which detergents or disinfectants, and in what order relative to cleaning?
Ask what product is proposed, at what dilution, with what contact time, and whether it is registered for use on your species and in your country. Ask how the product interacts with the cleaning method — some disinfectants are inactivated by detergent residue, some are corroded by the same chemicals that remove fat, and most need a genuinely clean, dry surface before they do their job.
Ask how a fat or grease load is handled, too. Heat that softens fat and mechanical force that lifts it can replace part of the chemical programme, which matters where a site is being cleaned between crops of animals with a short turnaround and no time for a long chemical dwell.
7. Who is on site, and what are they qualified to do?
Ask how many people, what training on biosecurity and on high-temperature equipment, and what the site induction covers. Steam and hot water at the temperatures used for this kind of work cause scald injuries fast, and a crew working in a barn with livestock, moving machinery and open drainage needs the same supervision as any industrial site. Ask who the responsible person on site is and how you reach them during the job.
8. How does the work interact with your biosecurity zones and downtime?
Ask how the crew moves between the dirty and clean ends of the site, whether they change protective equipment between buildings, and whether their own vehicle enters your yard or stays outside the perimeter. Ask for the plan in hours, not days: which building, in which order, and when the building is available for the next group of animals. Cleaning is usually the task that decides when the next cycle can start, so a schedule that does not name the handover time is not a schedule.
9. How is the job signed off?
Ask what the acceptance check actually consists of. Visible cleanliness is the minimum. Ask whether surfaces are checked by touch and by eye at floor level, in corners and behind fittings; whether a ATP swab or a laboratory sample forms part of sign-off where your own programme requires one; and whether the provider will re-treat a failed area at their own cost. Ask what record you receive — the machine used, the settings, the chemicals and dilutions, the times, the signatures — because if your own auditor asks for a cleaning record, an invoice is not one.
10. What happens when the equipment fails mid-job?
Ask about redundancy. A single machine on a two-day wash-down with a fixed stocking date is a risk you are carrying, not the provider. Ask what backup arrives, how fast, and whether the crew can keep working on the unaffected part of the site. Ask the same question about water and about power: many farm buildings have limited supply capacity, and a machine that needs more than the building can deliver will slow the job regardless of how well the crew is organised.
For operations where the equipment must travel between buildings rather than be dragged from one power point to another, battery-powered mobile units are the practical answer. Our HMW2 driving-style steam cleaning machine runs dry steam, wet steam and hot-water modes from on-board battery power and is built for narrow indoor and outdoor spaces, which is what most livestock yards and vehicle aprons actually are.
Turning the answers into a decision
Write the ten answers down and compare them. A provider who can name the surface risks, the water volume, the settings, the chemical programme and the sign-off method will cost more per hour than one who quotes a flat price for a day's work, and will usually cost less per clean over a year, because the building goes back into production on time and the next cycle starts on a surface that is genuinely clean.
If you want a machine and a specification to test those answers against, send us the building, the surfaces and the turnaround window through our contact page and we will tell you which model, which mode and which settings fit the job.
